Biography

French singer, a noted chanteuse with a tragic private life. In her career as a cafe singer, she became one of the most famous and beloved entertainers in Paris.

She was born literally in the streets of Paris, under a lamppost at rue de Belleville on a freezing winter night on a policeman's cape, the illegitimate child of a wanton chanteuse and a street acrobat. More or less abandoned by her mom, the child was brought up in a brothel in Normandy run by her dad's kin. As a child she was blinded for three years with cataracts on both eyes, but miraculously recovered her sight at age six. The local priest urged that she be moved to a different environment, so her dad took her, putting her to work passing the hat while he performed. Though her father trained her to follow his vocation, she became a street singer instead.

At 14, she left her dad to strike out on her own. The following year she met her 12-year-old half sister and the two joined forces. For the rest of her life, the two were inseparable and for two decades, plumbed the depths of dirt, depravity and poverty.

Piaf's first love affair ended in desertion and a stillborn baby. She had a love affair of two years with Marcel Cerdan until his death in a plane crash 10/27/1949.

After years of being never far from the streets, Piaf suddenly shot to stardom, the onstage rage of Paris. Other than a sudden freedom to indulge in extravagance, her life changed little. Money continued to slip through her fingers as easily as lovers slipped in and out of her bed. Her entire life had been extravagant, with the use of her body and her talent, with drugs and alcohol, overwork and poverty, always pushing herself. Always putting her freedom above all else, she sang, "Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien," as one who truly did regret nothing. She looked the part of her name, "Piaf," (little sparrow), in her too-big black dress, a tiny wisp of a woman.

She started a downhill slide. Her sister Simone Berteaut wrote in her 1969 biography that Piaf "had undergone four automobile accidents, attempted suicides, four drug cures, one sleep treatment, two episodes of delirium tremens, ulcers, jaundice, seven operations, three hepatic comas, spells of madness, two bouts with bronchial pneumonia and one with pulmonary edema."

In 1962 she met and married Theo Sarapo, a hairdresser and singer 20 years younger than she who was gentle and loving. In June and August 1963 she suffered her second and third hepatic comas. In September, when she was released from the hospital, Theo took her to a secluded little house in Plascassier, near Grasse. She weighed a mere 70 lbs; only her violet eyes remained vivid. On October 9, her first wedding anniversary, she called for her sister to come. Simone took a plane immediately and the two sisters talked and laughed until 4:00 AM. The nurse came in to give her a shot of medication and she cried in a loud voice, "I can die now. I have lived twice." She died of an internal hemorrhage, 10 October 1963 in her home in Grasse. Her body was then transported to Paris where she was officially declared dead on 11 October. She was buried along with both of her husbands at the Pere-Lachaise cemetery, Paris.